Sick Myth by Big Bill
As reiterated recently by Green Blah!, an excellent documentary about Green Bay’s fertile punk-rock scene during the late 1970s and 1980s, goofiness can be just as substantial an element in that music as any serious intent or primitive execution. Big Bill already knows it.
On its fourth studio LP, Sick Myth, the Austin, Texas quartet doesn’t hide the influence of the Dead Milkmen, infamous for cult classics like “Bitchin’ Camaro” and MTV-famous for “Punk Rock Girl.” The second track here, “Still Cold,” could be a Milkmen B-side with its herky-jerky rhythm, carnival organ, and comically longsuffering details from a narrator who works at the morgue.
Lead “singer” Eric Braden draws from a history of nerdy frontmen, including Milo Aukerman of the Descendents [sic] and Reverend Norb of (Green Bay’s own) Boris the Sprinkler. There are also adenoidal hints of Gordon Gano of the Violent Femmes, although Braden’s declamatory style also gets near Lou Reed’s monotonal side.
The music tends toward the angularity of awkwardly bent knees and outthrust elbows, but guitarist Alex Riegelman, bassist Alan Lauer, and drummer Jeffrey Olsen can deliberately shift toward a Rush-meets-Primus groove on the title track, or into a ska-paced release of tension, with the help of skronky saxophonist Billie Buck, on “Young Men of the World.”
Braden often crosscuts weird observations and strange questions with moments of thoughtfulness and even profundity: “When I Die” inserts a warning about a processing plant’s holding pond in the middle of wondering who will remember him after his death, or where his mail will be forwarded.
At first sounding like a novelty record, Sick Myth gains heft if not solemnity as it plays, until the final song, “Don’t Tell It to the Queen,” skanks toward an open-ended, abrupt stop. Big Bill isn’t too serious, but it also isn’t too goofy.
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